What is the dif? "\u2018" & "\u"+"2018"

[AYS__HAKKIM]

Hi all

1) app.selection[0].insertionPoints[0].contents = "\u2018";

2)    var uni = "2018";

      app.selection[0].insertionPoints[0].contents = "\u"+uni;

why does the 2nd one is not working as expected? could anyone suggest on this?

thanks & regards

Ays.Hakkim

[John Hawkinson]

Because backslash escapes are interpreted by the JavaScript tokenizer at the time of input. So "\u" is inrepreted as an incomplete escape, and of course "2018" is a regular string.

I suppose you could probably use eval('"\u'+uni+'"') to construct the character. But at that point, why not use String.fromCharCode(2018)?

[Jongware · Accepted solution]

But at that point, why not use String.fromCharCode(2018)?

Because that will insert the Nko letter "Nya" (U+07E2).

Unicode codepoints are generally given in hexadecimal notation -- as in "\u2018" --, but the argument for fromCharCode is a number, defaulting to decimal. Either add the hexadecimal prefix "0x"

String.fromCharCode (0x2018);

or use the decimal value of this number

String.fromCharCode (8216);

[AYS__HAKKIM]

thank u Jong and John.

[Marc Autret]

To complete the information provided above, if you need to create your Unicode character from a code given as a string (uni = "2018") you can use something like this:

String.fromCharCode(Number("0x" + uni))

Example:

var uni = "2018";

myInsertionPoint.contents = String.fromCharCode(Number("0x" + uni));

@+

Marc

[Jongware]

If your Javascript editor allows it

, you can also copy the quotes out of InDesign and paste them striaght into your string:

myInsertionPoint.contents = "“Hello”, he lied.";

A big font so you can see they're not the straight ones. Javascript doesn't care about what you literally put into the strings -- this and the "\u2018" notation both end up in memory exactly the same.

Surprise, surprise. The ESTK Editor does -- and that's not an April Fools' joke.

[John Hawkinson]

String.fromCharCode(parseInt(uni,16));